Mark Israel is a Founding Partner of Econic Partners. Previously, he spent nearly 20 years at Compass Lexecon, serving as its President during 2024 and 2025, and prior to that as a Senior Managing Director and Head of its North American Antitrust Practice. Prior to joining Compass Lexecon, Dr. Israel served as an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford in 2001.
Dr. Israel is one of the world’s leading antitrust economists and testifying experts. He has served as an expert in many of the most prominent antitrust litigations, including the Department of Justice and State Attorneys General’s Google Search and Google Ad Tech cases, and multiple merger trials on behalf of both the government and the parties. Overall, he has served as an economic expert for government agencies and private parties in over 150 matters in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia; provided live testimony more than 75 times; and submitted well over 100 expert reports, declarations, and affidavits. He has been qualified by courts to provide expert testimony more than 20 times, his opinions have been favorably replied upon by many courts in multiple countries, and none of his opinions have ever been excluded by a court.
Dr. Israel was named Global Competition Review’s Economist of the Year for 2023 and a Who’s Who Legal Global Elite Thought Leader in each of the last five years (2022-2026).
Dr. Israel’s expertise involves the application of economic tools—including empirical and econometric methods, as well as applied economic theory—to antitrust cases involving mergers, joint ventures, single- and multi-firm litigation matters, regulatory proceedings, and arbitrations. He is known for special expertise in vertical mergers and vertical foreclosure cases, but he has also done extensive work on horizontal mergers, and generally all aspects of merger review, analysis of single- and multi-firm conduct, liability analysis, class certification, and damages. His work has covered a breadth of industries, with his most extensive experience in wireline and wireless telecommunications, media, digital advertising, internet search, sports, airlines, railroads and other transportation services, high technology, retail, and consumer packaged goods. He also has substantial experience in many other industries including financial markets, healthcare, biotech, distribution of food and other products, energy markets, and many others.
As one recent example, Dr. Israel provided expert testimony in support of the C$26 billion merger between Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications, with Canada’s Competition Tribunal describing Dr. Israel’s testimony as “knowledgeable, candid, and forthcoming” as part of its opinion upholding the merger. Similarly, in its January 2025 Opinion denying the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction against Tempur Sealy’s $4 billion acquisition of Mattress Firm, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas agreed with essentially all of Dr. Israel’s opinions.
When commenting on Dr. Israel’s April 2025 move to Econic Partners, David Gelfand, Senior Counsel at Cleary Gottlieb and one of the country’s leading antitrust lawyers, described Dr. Israel as “one of the outstanding economists of this generation;” Marguerite Sullivan, a nationally recognized trial lawyer from Latham & Watkins, described Dr. Israel as “bulletproof in depositions and at trial;” and Koren Wong-Ervin, a partner at Jones Day and a former FTC lawyer, described Dr. Israel as “an exceptionally talented economist and one of the best testifiers I have ever seen.”
Dr. Israel is also a recognized thought leader in competition economics and applied econometrics. He has spoken on these topics to academic, business, and government audiences around the world, and he has written numerous academic articles on a variety of topics related to many aspects of competition economics and applied econometrics. His research has been published in journals including, among others, The American Economic Review, The Rand Journal of Economics, The Journal of Law and Economics, The International Journal of Industrial Organization, The Review of Industrial Organization, and The Journal of Competition Law and Economics. Among his publications is the chapter on Econometrics and Regression Analysis in the Third Edition of the American Bar Association’s treatise on Proving Antitrust Damages (co-authored with two colleagues, including Bryan Keating of Econic Partners).